BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets
|genre=Action-adventure |modes=Time-restricted single-player with multiplayer scoreboards |platforms=Super Famicom with Satellaview add-on }} BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban is an action-adventure video game first broadcast to Satellaview owners, in March–April 1997 and rebroadcast as reruns at least 3 times. It is the third game in the BS Zelda series and as with the two previously broadcast BS Zelda spin-off games, BS Zelda no Densetsu and BS Zelda no Densetsu: MAP2, it also does not feature Link as the protagonist but instead utilizes the player's avatar from the inter-related Satellaview game, BS-X. For this reason it is also generally considered to be a spin-off title from the main Zelda series. Stylistically similar to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES, BS Zelda no Densetsu: Inishie no Sekiban is also occasionally regarded as an enhanced remake of this title. This conception most likely arises from the stylistic similarities of the games and the fact that the game is no longer playable in its original form and thus the differing plot of the game is more or less unknown to the general gaming public. The game's title derives the "BS" portion of its name from the Broadcast Satellite system through which the game was transmitted by the distributor, St.GIGA, to Satellaview owners between the date of first broadcast in March 1997 and the last broadcast in May 1999. As a Satellaview SoundLink Game, broadcasts for BS Zelda no Densetsu were composed of both a discretely quantifiable portion of game code and, as with the earlier BS Zelda games, a continually streaming vocal track employing the voices of voice actors. This would be the last SoundLink game to be broadcast via Satellaview marking the end of a 4-year period of SoundLink broadcasts, and it would one of the very last Satellaview games to be broadcast under Nintendo's direct control.セント・ギガ衛星データ放送は. St.GIGA (at Ask.ne.jp). Archived 8 May 1999. Plot Set six years after the events in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the story of Inishie no Sekiban begins when the character avatar from the distant enters a mysterious-looking that has appeared in the town. Finding only a magical golden bee, the avatar follows after it and enters the back of the house where strong magic whisks the youth off to the Land of Hyrule where Princess Zelda's dreams have been troubled. Discovering the youth collapsed on the ground, Zelda and her aged companion (a character from A Link to the Past - brother of the more memorable Sahasrala) revive the child and discuss the recent and troubling premonitions they have felt concerning Ganon's return. A few moments later a soldier arrives and announces that Ganon's evil forces have returned. Aginah and Zelda explain that Link has left the country and they ask the child to help obtain the eight "Ancient Stone Tablets." It is believed that if the hero/heroine can obtain these tablets, the message in them will reveal an ancient secret capable of defending Hyrule from Ganon and his army. As the youth travels through Hyrule collecting items and stone tablets, support comes from afar by telepathic communications from Aginah (voiced by ), the fortune teller ( ), Princess Zelda ( ), the Hyrulian soldier ( ), and even the narrator of the game ( ). As the hero fights through the various dungeons, the land of Hyrule lends its powers to the child at certain pre-set points in the that controls the youth's access to the land. Aginah and the fortune teller explain these matters to the youth whom Zelda identifies as the spoken of in legends. Thus, the Hero of Light sets out to collect the Ancient Stone Tablets, traveling in the same Hyrule depicted in A Link to the Past. After collecting the Tablets and drawing the Master Sword from its pedestal in the Lost Woods,This plot point is the source of some fan disagreement with the canonicity of the game as the ending sequence from its predecessor, A Link to the Past, clearly states "And the Master Sword sleeps again... FOREVER!" ( ) the Hero of Light, along with Zelda, climbs to the summit of Death Mountain to an ancient monument. Zelda translates the tablets using the Book of Mudora discovered in the basement of Link's House and the monument then cracks, revealing the Silver Arrow and Sacred Bow. This, Zelda says, is what the Hero of Light needs to defeat Ganon. Finally, a red portal opens up and reveals the way into the Dark World, where Ganon resides. The Hero of Light enters Ganon's Tower and battles Ganon, defeating him with the Silver Arrow. After retreating back to Hyrule, Zelda reveals that although Link had sealed Ganon's body away forever in the Dark World by defeating him 6 years ago, Ganon's malicious essence had not been sealed. It was through this evil energy that the Hero of Light was pulled into Hyrule. The Hero then returns the Master Sword to its resting place in the Lost Woods, leaves Zelda and Aginah, and returns to The Town Whose Name Has Been Stolen in a flash of light. Gameplay The gameplay dynamics of BS Zelda: Inishie no Sekiban are most closely comparable to A Link to the Past. However, as with the previous BS Zelda titles, there are a number of major differences that make play-through for the two games substantially different. Notable among these were the renewed uses of streaming SoundLink vocal data and strict time limits and the game's episodic nature, as previously featured in the earlier BS Zelda games. The use of SoundLink in Inishie no Sekiban demonstrated a degree of maturity over the previous BS Zelda games, insofar as they allowed a more natural and flowing playthrough without the pauses and delays that characterized vocal messages in BS Zelda.BS The Legend of Zelda: The Ancient Stone Panel IGN. Retrieved 9 July 2010. Rather than displaying a "Listen Closely" sign and pausing gameplay, the player could continue to move about during voice messages in Inishie no Sekiban. The plot that was developed through vocal files was also considerably more intricate, with important plot details revealed in dialogue only spoken during playthrough. The voice cast also grew in number from three people in BS Zelda to a cast of five,スーパーファミコンアワー 番組ガ イド ~オリジナル ストーリー! BS ゼルダの伝説~. ファミ通. 1997. and fully voiced side-quest events and cut-scenes were also added at the beginning and end''ゼルダのビデオ''. ファミ通. (ASIN: B00007KL8U). 19 February 2003. The game again renewed its use of the in-game 1-hour-long "Zelda Time" clock as previously employed in earlier BS Zelda games. At various pre-set points in Zelda Time special events would occur such as the appearance of fairies, the casting of magical attacks such as Bombos or Ether, and the granting of unlimited munitions to the Hero of Light for a limited duration. At other times, plot-related events would occur (such as Princess Zelda being attacked by monsters or the priest falling into the river), the weather would change (fog or rain), and enemies would spring forth in great profusion. Most time-linked events would be explained to the player via SoundLink so the player would not miss important events such as the side-quests.おすすめ番組 ~BSゼルダの伝説 古代の石盤~. Nintendo.co.jp. 5 June 1997. As with the earlier BS Zelda titles, Inishie no Sekiban was divided into four weekly episodes broadcast in episodic installments.Carless, Simon. GameSetLinks: From Green To Mutant League. Game Set Watch. 23 March 2007. Once again episodes were named using the basic Satellaview suffixes described above, and broadcast only during a narrow 1-hour window. In addition, each episode once again limited players to a certain restricted playing area by withholding necessary items to ensure a paced gameplay experience and to enable a close tailoring of SoundLink plot details to the events unfolding in new areas of the overworld map. The overworld in Inishie no Sekiban is roughly identical to that in A Link to the Past except that it features cloud coverage to demarcate the areas that are explorable by the Hero of Light. As in the previous BS Zelda titles, the player's name and gender are selected in the Satellaview game-selection interface, BS-X. This initial selection again carries across to the game, and the characters themselves are nameless in-game referred to by other characters as either the "Hero of Light"The term is a gender-neutral construction in Japanese. or simply "child"/"youth." The appearance of the Satellaview avatar has been updated for Inishie no Sekiban from the smaller version used in the earlier BS Zelda games in a manner consistent with A Link to the Past's differences from the original The Legend of Zelda. Several recurring features unique to Inishie no Sekiban were introduced to the game including the addition of thieves that sell the Hero of Time munition upgrades, rental shops that rent shovels and sword upgrades, gambling minigames to increase rupee/score count, and the mysterious Mole character that if spoken to will uncover a grotto filled with many hundreds of rupees. The Mole in particular represents a noteworthy characteristic of the game as the location of the Mole and the Mole's grotto changed for subsequent rerun broadcasts. Thus, whereas reruns of the earlier BS Zelda games were identical in content to prior broadcast runs, reruns of Inishie no Sekiban contained original non-header content that could be used to identify the specific date of broadcast. Other differences between Inishie no Sekiban and A Link to the Past (and the other BS Zelda titles) include the alteration of items from the past such as the Pegasus Boots which could now enable the player to change directions while running,This ability of the Pegasus Boots evokes the same ability granted to the Satellaview avatar when wearing the purchasable in-game in Sore wa Namae o Nusumareta Machi no Monogatari. and to move between rooms and screens without automatically stopping as in A Link to the Past. The dungeon items were also modified so that instead of pendants and crystals the player now collected the eight titular Ancient Stone Tablets. Slight game-dynamics alterations were made for Inishie no Sekiban as well, including the removal of cracked bombable walls and their replacement with walls that could be tested for weaknesses by sounding them with the sword as first used in Link's Awakening. As in the previous BS Zelda games, players received a score for successful completion of in-game objectives. Factors weighing into the score included the opening of treasure chests, completion of the side-quest event, talking to the Mole, and the collection of rupees, small keys, pieces of heart, dungeon items, heart containers, special items, and tablets. Negative factors included the passage of each minute of "Zelda Time" prior to the collection of the 2 weekly tablets, the loss of hearts, and game-overs. Though scoring had no effect on gameplay, there were other post-game benefits. At the end of each hour of play the player was given a score readout. By submitting these game high scores in the form of a password player scores would be recorded by Nintendo. If the player scored high enough in comparison to other players during that week, the score and the player's name would be reported and the player could sometimes win prizes such as memory packs. Development Broadcast dates Reception and legacy As with the prior BS Zelda games, Inishie no Sekiban was also well received, winning official recognition by Nintendo for gaining a spot among the Top 30 Player's choice votes for BS titles.タイトル一覧 Nintendo.co.jp. Archived 5 June 1997. The Korean Game Developer's Conference would later cite Inishie no Sekiban as one of the Satellaview titles primarily responsible for fostering a sense of collegial competition between Japanese players through St.GIGA's publishing of score ranking tables.오 준 경. 닌텐도의 게임 세계와 콘솔에서의 연동 시스템. KGDC 2002. 2002. The successes of the game among the gaming public prompted Nintendo and St.GIGA's rebroadcasting it again for three additional reruns.Renzo. Satellaview: Juegos Desde el Espacio. Atomix. July 2009. p.56. Reruns were broadcast in June 1997, in December 1998, and to mark the dissolution of the partnership between St.GIGA and Nintendo as the final SoundLink Game ever broadcast via Satellaview in May 1999. Emulation Because the game could only be played during certain predetermined hours due to constraints imposed by the use of SoundLink content, game data was saved to 8M Memory Packs as temporary files that were originally intended to be deleted and over-written with later game data. In addition, SoundLink data itself was streamed to players and thus only saved as volatile RAM which was overwritten during gameplay and ultimately lost as soon as the Satellaview was turned off. For these reasons and the fact that the game has never been re-released in hard-copy, Inishie no Sekiban cannot currently be played in its original form. Despite these setbacks, however, a small subculture of collectors and enthusiasts devoted to the restoration of Satellaview and Zelda games have managed to create ROM emulations from dumped materials stored on 8M Memory Packs that were not over-written by their owners. A 4-week version has been completed from dumped material and is currently playable as four separate ROMs, however several alternate versions of the game (as defined by weekly positioning of the Mole character - see above) have not been yet been recovered and may be lost forever. The emulated versions of the BS Zelda games that exist online fall into a legal grey area as they contain proprietary material (such as the use of Zelda and Ganon graphics designed by Nintendo) but do not have a substantial effect upon the work's value considering that Nintendo has ceased support for the games and has never released them in hard-copy. In addition, emulated versions that exist today commonly contain thorough attribution giving credit to Nintendo, St.GIGA, and all original production staff. Whatever the legal status of the games, Nintendo has turned a blind eye to the existence of Satellaview emulations. References Category:1997 video games Category:The Legend of Zelda video games Category:Action-adventure games Category:Top-down video games Category:Video game sequels Category:Satellaview games Category:Video game spin-offs